Crown Heights

Crown Heights is a neighborhood of central Brooklyn, New York City. Development in the area began during the early 20th century when many upper-class residences (including brownstone buildings) were erected along the Eastern Parkway, a fashionable place for secondary homes in which Manhattan's bourgeois class could reside. From the 1920s to the 1960s, Crown Heights was overwhelmingly white and predominantly Jewish, and it was a premier neighborhood of the city. During the 1960s and 1970s, white flight and the influx of African-Americans caused the racial demographics to change, but the Hasidic Jews stayed. Crown Heights suffered from high unemployment, a high juvenile and adult crime rate, poor nutrition due to a lack of family income, absence of job skills and readiness, and a high concentration of elderly residents. During the blackout of 1977, 75 area stores were robbed by criminals. In 1991, the Caribbean/African-American community began a pogrom against the Jews of the neighborhood after a Guyanese boy was accidentally killed by a car in the motorcade of Rabbi Menahcem Mendel Schneerson, leading to the murder of an Australian Jewish boy. During the 1990s, crime, racial conflict, and violence decreased due to gentrification, but community tensions persisted. In 2010, Crown Heights had a population of 142,839, with 74.7% being black, 19.1% white, 4.2% Hispanic, and 2% Asian and other ethnic groups.